[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Sailing on Rivers

[Jules Bean <jules@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Aug 23, 2000 at 03:32:28PM +0200, Erik Sigra wrote:
> * Fix before CVS: Cities next to rivers can build triremes. Only cities
> at rivers should be able to do that (se "Moria" in savegame).

This raises the interesting (to me) idea of having a 'shipyard'
improvement, which actually has a location on the map (like an
airfield, or a fortress). The effect of this would be to allow any
city which has the thing in its city radius to build ocean/river ships
(depending whether the shipyard is on the river, or the ocean). These
are built in the normal way, but appear on the shipyard square, not
the city square.


> * Suggestion: It looks silly when the triremes can move through mountain
> streams (tile with mountain and river, south of "Minas Morgul"). Not
> very realistic.

This doesn't seem unreasonable to me.  As I see it, freeciv doesn't
show streams, only rivers.  And it's perfectly possible to have rather
large rivers in mountainous areas --- remember that the tile shows the
general terrain conditions, it doesn't exclude there being a flatter
bit -- the river valley.

> 
> * Suggestion: In real life, navigating a river may be much harder than
> sailing on the ocean. I suggest triremes only move 1 step in rivers
> instead of 3. (Like the difference for land units moving through the
> bush vs along roads.) Maybe it could cost 3 movement points for moving
> upstreams and 2 for moving downstreams?

Would be odd if triremes could then move more slowly than phalanxes
(which get the 1/3 MP rate on rivers).

> 
> * Should cities on river squares be able to build coastal defenses (to
> defend against triremes),

Or some other improvement with the same effect. (Note that, IRL, quite
big ships in the 'destroyer' class can come some way up river to
attack cities like, e.g. London and Paris which both have big rivers).

> harbours (they could send the fishing boats
> out through the river to the ocean to catch the food). 

I would have thought only if the sea was within the city radius (in
which case, is it already possible to build a harbour?).

As a gameplay change,it might be nice to make the harbour
implementation like the irrigation implementation --- you have to go
out and build 'fisheries' or something.  This might help balance
harbour --- a harbour is a very cheap&powerful improvement for a city
with lots of sea squares (especially when combined with offshore platform).

> What about port
> facility, offshore platform? Those buildings should have flags to
> allow/forbid building them at rivers, maybe an integer to allow them to
> be built at rivers of a particular size. Size could be calculated as the
> number of river squares upstreams.

Yes.

Jules